Lucha Worth Watching: CMLL Unexpectedly Stretches Out

Blue Panther/Black Panther/Blue Panther Jr. vs. Misterioso Jr./Puma/Tiger CMLL 7/10

ER: What a smokin' trios hidden in the middle of a Tuesday night Arena Mexico show. For whatever reason they get a ton of time to do their thing, and they make some real cool use of that time. The primera is long and is entirely on the mat, easily the most matwork I've seen in a CMLL match in a couple years, totally cool and unexpected. Most of the time is taken by Panther and Misterioso, as the respective maestros working a bunch of longform leglocks. CMLL just doesn't let matwork stretch out like this any longer, and it was awesome seeing these two work holds, and work in little moments, like Panther getting his leg twisted but you see him start to wedge his free foot in between Misterioso's knees and it leads to him sweeping and cleanly picking up Misterioso's ankle. They go to a couple standoffs and then go right back to attacking legs, the crowd getting more and more into it the longer these two stay in the ring. I cannot recall a recent CMLL match where the same two guys held court longer than this (over 6 minutes) to start a match, and I loved it. BP Jr. comes in to do some more leg lock and Indian deathlock battling with Tiger and ties him up with a cool inverted stretch, part cruceta, part making his shoulder blades touch.

Rudos weren't messing around in the segunda and jump Panther familia and gleefully kick their black and blue asses around the ring until they were black and blue. Panther Jr. takes a few bumps over the barricade, Tiger throws a full beer at BP (who ducks), just a fun mugging around the ring as if Misterioso was a battle hardened general shouting "beat the crap out of them and don't let them roll on the mat with our legs!" The tercera is a continuation and much more of a modern lucha tercera, but better. It never devolves into big move 2 count kickouts, instead jamming in a ton of partner saves which is infinitely more interesting. They kept ramping it up and the crowd got louder with every save. We had a couple false finishes and a couple peaks; you watch enough formula Arena Mexico trios matches and it's obvious when something is doing something a bit differently. Panther Jr. hits a couple dives, Misterioso wraps himself around the ringpost on a great bump, crowd gets super hyped for the elder Panther matching up with Puma and Tiger, really the tercera felt like a whole CMLL trios in itself. Cool vibe with several things out of the norm for this kind of trios, and I smiled the whole time as they kept going and the fans kept getting more rabid for Panther.